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Posts Tagged ‘C64’

Eugene Jarvis strikes again with one of the greatest shooters of all time, an absolute classic!

Most of my Defender time was spent with a handheld LCD version that had a gabillion buttons, required like 4 D-size batteries and sounded like the rapture was about to take place but I loved it to bits and played it non-stop for months. This was all pre-Gameboy, in fact I think it was pre-me owning a C64 so it’s not like I had much choice on games to play. Still, the rock-hard gameplay shone through.

Ah Eugene Jarvis, is there anything you can’t do?

By the way if you own a PS3, PS4 or Vita (and if you don’t, seriously, buy a Vita) then you should try Resogun, which I have to admit might just be that little bit better than Defender. It’s amazing! No wonder our Lord and Saviour Eugene Jarvis is making a game with its developers.

This game was a lot of fun! Not growing up in a country that had a huge love of baseball ingrained in its cultural DNA I found Street Sports Baseball easy to understand and just plain fun to watch. Epyx always filled their games with slick animation and cute graphical flourishes that added so much life to each game, and this one was no exception. Give it a go today!

Here are some other comics you might like!

This is one of my fave MegaDrive games, especially for the brilliant Original mode which included a whole extra game in there, with extra depth and scenery that the Arcade mode didn’t have! It’s a shame it didn’t feature the two player mode, but you can’t have everything in life.

Oh wait now MAME and things like Capcom Classics is around I guess we can now awesome thanks guys.

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Hello! Here is a new comic about Rastan! I played this on the Commodore 64 a lot, and it always bugged me that this super strong Conan-type dude couldn’t handle water and not only that, took absolutely forever to die once he touched water. It was maddening!

Anyway. Many years ago on this site I made another comic about Rastan and it was pretty bad, so bad that I completely forgot I made it at all while making this one, and it was only when I was getting ready to upload it that I remembered I already “did” Rastan at all! So then I wasted an hour seeing if there was another game out there that had this “brave Conan-type dude that takes forever to die in water” thing going on and I couldn’t think of one for the life of me. Even Rastan 2 and 3 don’t seem to have water in them at all! And yikes, Rastan 2 looks like hot garbage.

So now there are two comics about Rastan on this site, and we’re all just going to have to live with it, I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Firstly, that main sprite. The way its legs move give the game a real alien feel – in an era where you’re always playing as a soldier, or a car, or a soldier in a car, piloting a giant mechanical spider always felt so intriguing and fresh. And the way it twisted when you moved left and right gave a sensation of actually piloting a vehicle instead of just moving a sprite around the screen. The unique visual style (45 degree viewpoint with shadows) also added to the feel of exploring a barren, desolate landscape.

A big part of the game, for me, was the map screen. You had to chart your own path through the radiated world, and each choice led to consequences for the difficulty of the level, chances of finding artifacts, and cost to your radiation meter. Having that freedom to explore felt so liberating and it had a big impact on every game I made. I wanted that feeling of being able to take on a game on your own terms wherever possible.

Finally – I had no idea the game got reviewed in Zzap well after I got the game! I was lured in by the cover. The colourful Activision branding instilled a sense of confidence (boy, those were the days, huh?), the screenshots looked fantastic, and I loved the idea of having another cartridge game so I could play the game quickly. For some reason, the “BY LUBAR” credit on the front was especially intriguing – who was Lubar? He must be a super famous game designer because people could recognise him by one name, I figured. Like Madonna or Prince!

Pastfinder’s the very definition of an under-rated classic in my mind. Very cleverly designed and expertly executed!

Here are some other comics you might like!

That bloody Pixels movie has a lot to answer for, and what’s with young people today not having the exact same childhood memories as I have? There should be a law against it.

I love Galaga. I love it to absolute bits. If I ever get rich enough to have lots of single-game arcade cabinets, Galaga would be right on top of the list (after getting Street Fighter Alpha 2, obviously). I love the upgrade system, I love the bonus rounds, I love that the enemies are predictable enough to build strategies against but unpredictable enough to keep you on your toes. It’s pretty much the perfect old-school arcade game.

You can get it for pretty much every system ever, but the one I spent the most time with was the fantastic first Namco Museum collection for PlayStation 1, and it came complete with late ’90s “virtual museum” that you could explore in all of its chunky 3D, low resolution goodness. Wow, remember when re-buying old games in fancy new packaging was a new thing?

Here are some other comics you might like!

I absolutely adore Wonderboy in Monsterland! It is one of my all time favourite games – a delightful mix of RPG and platform action that worked surprisingly well as an arcade game but became a must-play on home machines. It’s a damn sight more fun than the original Wonderboy, though you don’t get to crack open eggs, and more light hearted than Wonderboy in Monsterworld.

I first played Monsterland on the C64, a very nice conversion that was let down by tiny sprites and way-too-frequent pauses for loading. The Sega Master System version was the one I sunk the most number of hours into, and that’s the one I return to again and again. It recently got re-released for the PlayStation 3, and that is fun too and of course arcade-perfect.

I never got to play the PC Engine version! The Games Machine practically drooled over that one! I wanted a PC Engine SO BADLY looking at their preview of Wonderboy in Monsterland.

At any rate, none of the bar operators in the game thought twice about selling wine to a minor, which was just plain weird when you think about it. What kind of place is Monsterland anyway?!